Sunday, 21 December 2014

[During typically dismissive
conversation between self and spouse about such silly phrases as ‘blue sky
thinking’ and ‘thinking outside the box’.]

12-year-old
son: “So many people think ‘outside the box’ these days that if you think
‘inside the box’ then you are, in fact, thinking ‘outside the box’ ”.

We had to stop the car so that we
could be really modern parents, i.e. worship said child, take a photograph to
mark the occasion, blog his comment, and smile beatifically about the wisdom
and insight of our genius offspring.

“I found one!” I exclaimed in what I hoped sounded like a
detached, intellectual voice. “Page 15 of How
to be Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Running around the Kitchen like a
Dangerous Cat. Look at the illustration: icing sugar everywhere!”

My spare bedroom rarely follows tabloid newspapers, but has
long since been a huge fan of Nigel Lawson’s book about global warming…

Next week, Dr
Meringue-Pie will be analyzing flat-pack furniture with his chimney.

Friday, 24 October 2014

Brian
Cox looks to the camera, utters a softly-spoken thought of great profundity
about humanity’s place in the universe and then falls off the edge of a cliff.

‘Cut!’ shouts the director. ‘Can we have
another Brian Cox, please?’

A junior research assistant promptly goes to
the Brian Cox Room, where they keep the spare Brian Coxes. The assistant knocks
before popping her head through the door.

‘We need another Brian,’ she says to the 307
assembled Brian Coxes.

‘What was it this time?’ asks one. ‘A volcano?
A manhole? A black hole?’

‘Cliff,’
whispers the assistant.

‘Third one this series,’ says another Brian
Cox, as he walks towards the assistant, hand outstretched. ‘Brian Cox,’ he
says, by way of introduction, ‘although you probably knew that already.’

‘If you’d like to follow me,’ says the
assistant, once the introduction is over.

Brian Cox and the assistant walk towards the
cliff edge, where they are met by the impatient director. ‘Brian, we need to
re-do the shot. You fell off the cliff as the last word was coming out and it
sounded very post-watershed.’

Brian Cox utters a softly-spoken apology of
great sincerity before asking what it was that he was saying. ‘Some shit about
humanity’s place in the universe,’ replies the director.

‘Oh, right,’ says Brian Cox. ‘Do we need to
do the shot next to a cliff?’ he asks.

The
universe will be dismantled an atom at a time. God will take each atom and make
it vanish behind his Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility.

When
the universe has been dismantled an atom at a time and hidden behind God’s Harry
Potter Cloak of Invisibility, God will then dismantle himself an atom at a time
and hide the atoms behind his Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility until the only
thing left in the universe is God’s Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility.

Sentience
will evolve inside God’s Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility and thus, God’s Harry
Potter Cloak of Invisibility will notice a sizeable collection of atoms and
decide what to do with them.

“Let
there be light entertainment!” God’s Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility will
command and a new, slightly shallower universe will evolve.

And
this is how God’s Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility becomes God*.

And it
is true because it has been written because it is true.

All: And so say all of us. Oh-oh,
the hocus-pocus, that’s what it’s all about.

(from the Gospel According to Leif
Garret)

*Although
destined forever to live in a universe which refuses to acknowledge his
existence, despite him once turning up at a fancy dress party disguised as a
magic carpet with the words I’m God now
and this magic carpet manifestation is a test of your faith woven into its
fabric; unfortunately, it was in a language which nobody understood** and which
looked like some fleur de lys patterns
which had been stitched on by a one-armed bandit***.

** Only
three people in the new God’s new universe could speak Cloak and they were all cloaks.

***Not
a gambling one-armed bandit, but an actual one-armed bandit with only one arm.

Monday, 22 September 2014

‘Rock journalism is written by
people who can’t write for people who can’t read’

– Sir Frank of Zappa

Just what
is it about the Midlands and hard rockers?

Is it
something in the air?

Is it something
in the water?

Is it
something in the air and in the water?

Maybe
it’s the accents?

Until
science shines its all-seeing light on the matter, we’ll never know for sure,
but in the meantime, there can be no denying that the Midlands is the
birthplace of the highest form of human artistic achievement outside of the
Sistine Chapel.

I
refer, of course, to Heavy Metal.

All
that is needed to prove this bold statement is to name check a handful of bands
who have so enriched the metallic life our nation.

They’re
all from around here.

Here
goes:

Black
Sabbath, and if that’s not enough evidence for you then there’s…

Judas
Priest, and if you need further proof then how about…

Diamond
Head? and if you haven’t heard of them…

there’s
always Slade, who were so important that they even named an art school after them
three-hundred miles away in London,
of all places.

If all
of that that wasn’t enough to convince you, then the coup the grace, the
clincher, the absolute final word on the matter belongs to a Midlands band that
has had massive commercial success everywhere in the world.

The
band that stands at the vibrating and vibrant heart in the pantheon of all
things authentically leather-clad, rifftastic and screechworthy; the very
apotheosis of the heavy musical experience.

I
refer, of course, to Duran Duran.

Wild Boys! You betcha.

Or, as
their best-selling biography, ‘Make-Up is
for Boys’, should have been called, ‘The Toughest Band the Midlands Ever
Produced’.

Saturday, 20 September 2014

The
first monk goes up to the information desk and asks if they have any duty-free
porn.

The
barman says, “Hop it sonny Jim; we don’t serve Muslims in here.”

The
second monk explains to the barman that his Benedictine habit is not a burka
and tries to enlighten the barman by embarking upon a protracted theological
explanation about the sartorial differences between Muslim women and
Benedictine monks, which takes longer than it should have done, seeing as it
can be summed up in two words: no mask.

Where
were we? Oh, yes.

So,
these three strippers walk into a monastery at the end of their shift.

The
first one knocks on the imposing wooden door.

The
door slowly creaks open, seemingly of its own volition. Although, thinking about
it, ‘volition’ is probably too fancy a word for this joke.

The
door slowly creaks open, seemingly all by itself. Mind you, the phrase ‘all by
itself’ is a bit ambiguous, don’t you think? As if by magic? As if it had free
will? As if… what’s the word for when you do something voluntarily? It has the
same root. Volition. That’s it.

The
door slowly creaks open, seemingly of its own volition, and a voice calls out.

‘I’m
not sure there’s such a thing as duty-free porn, but you could try WHSmiths,’
says the woman at the Airport Lounge Information Desk, because she has been to
a Politeness Awareness seminar (although, you do find yourself asking, ‘How
likely is it that it was a real seminar?’ don’t you?) and has learnt the
importance of being polite to all customers/clients, irrespective of whether
they actually deserve it. ‘Think of the customer as a terrorist,’ the
Politeness Awareness seminar leader, whose background was in biscuit-tin marketing,
had said.

So the
first monk goes to WHSmiths and buys a copy of Hello magazine, which is apparently the closest thing they have to
duty-free porn.

The
second monk finishes his protracted theological explanation about the different
clothing habits of, respectively, Benedictine monks and Muslim women, and
orders a pint of bitter.

‘I
thought you Muslims weren’t allowed to drink,’ says the barman.

‘Why are you naked?’ asks the voice.

The
three strippers had become inured to their nudity and had forgotten to dress at
the end of their shift.

The
first stripper spies a dress hanging from the branches of a tree, pulls it down
and puts it on. It’s hardly Versace but it does the job.

Now,
at some point in the joke, there is a ‘reveal’, where we learn that the
strippers are, in fact, male strippers, and you sit there thinking, ‘Ah! So I’m
not as reconstructed as I thought I was,’ and you go for a top-up of cultural
Marxism at the BBC’s new shopping channel, which is being hosted by the Dream
of Scottish Independence’s still twitching (nice oxymoron) corpse, but I can’t
remember at which point the ‘reveal’ comes because, as you may have gathered, I’m
not very good at telling jokes.